Community remembers Ed Caram

By AMANDA HICKEY Daily News Staff

Published: Tuesday, September 3, 2013 at 05:27 PM.

The Air Force veteran worked for the Strategic Air Command during the Vietnam War, according to Daily News archives, and honed his photography and research skills studying maps and examining classified documents. After his enlistment, he moved to Raleigh and used his G.I. Bill to graduate from N.C. State University where he was the photo editor at the college’s student newspaper.

He worked at the Winston-Salem Journal with many of his photos published worldwide via The Associated Press and The United Press International. He also contributed to the Raleigh News and Observer.

Taylor, who is now the executive editor at the Burlington Times-News, said Tuesday morning that while Caram didn’t write, he contributed frequently to The Daily News, Newsweek and many other publications with information and photos.

“(He) loved information and tracking down information,” Taylor said. “He worked a lot of different sources, he worked the phones. It amazes me how much information he could find.”

Elliott Potter, the executive editor and publisher of The Daily News, remembered Caram as a “news junkie” who spent more than a year gathering information from the USO’s Stateside Books, which service members signed or drew in while at the USO. Potter said that Caram took several Vietnam-era names from the books, which were divided by state, and began cross referencing them. Once he gathered related documents and spoke to people who were either with the deceased service member at the time of death or nearby, he worked with Potter to write the story.

The end result was a series of articles which ran in The Daily News about service members who traveled through the Jacksonville USO and later died in Vietnam.

Local author and photographer Ed Caram passed away over the weekend but friends say he won’t soon be forgotten for who he was or the work he did in Onslow County.

Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown remembered his long-time friend Tuesday. Bullets Caram dropped off for Brown sat in a nearby desk drawer. A photo Caram shot of Brown with his mom and dad hung on his office wall. A photo Caram took of a sunset is used to block the window on Brown’s office door. A projectile from the Civil War that Caram found sits in a storage area attached to Brown’s office. And a bag with a camera and disc in it that Caram dropped off was nearby.

Caram, 66, died early Sunday at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Durham after a battle with cancer. He was a frequent contributor to The Daily News, among other publications.

Brown said he visited his friend regularly and last saw him about a week ago. During the visit, Caram was drifting in and out and Brown said he’d told his friend that he was going to check in with the nurses and planned to leave while Caram slept. After stopping at the nurse’s station, he popped his head back into Caram’s room and found him with the covers pulled back, trying to get out of his hospital bed.

“He said ‘Sheriff, you’ve got to get me out of this place,’” Brown said.

Brown said that during that visit, Caram was showing a lot of energy. “He knew who I was and he knew what he wanted.”

But Brown couldn’t make it happen for him. He told Caram that breaking him out of the hospital would land them both in hot water.

“That was our last conversation. He was asking me as sheriff to do something for him. He was always doing something for me,” he said.

Tuesday Brown was able to do something for his friend. Brown said he was trying to track down Caram’s one living relative, an aunt, who was last known to be in California, and had been unsuccessful for several months.

But Monday, he found a 1940 Census with her email address written on it among Caram’s belongings. Brown emailed her late Monday asking her to call him and heard from her early Tuesday, he said. Brown is hoping she will be able to visit Onslow County for Caram’s memorial, which has yet to be scheduled.

Brown said his friend was a renowned photographer, renowned researcher of history and author of two books, “Fires on the Coast,” which is a compilation of more than 30 years of research regarding German submariners and their demise in the Graveyard of the Atlantic, and “It’s Called North Carolina,” which features photos of rural North Carolina from the 1970s and 1980s.

He also remembers a man whose family was from Persia, which they fled due to persecution, and who was a “good solid American.” Caram served in the U.S. Air Force, was pro-law enforcement, and was a firm believer in the right to bear arms, Brown said.

“Ed was just a super nice guy … I never heard him cut down people,” Brown said.

The Air Force veteran worked for the Strategic Air Command during the Vietnam War, according to Daily News archives, and honed his photography and research skills studying maps and examining classified documents. After his enlistment, he moved to Raleigh and used his G.I. Bill to graduate from N.C. State University where he was the photo editor at the college’s student newspaper.

He worked at the Winston-Salem Journal with many of his photos published worldwide via The Associated Press and The United Press International. He also contributed to the Raleigh News and Observer.

Taylor, who is now the executive editor at the Burlington Times-News, said Tuesday morning that while Caram didn’t write, he contributed frequently to The Daily News, Newsweek and many other publications with information and photos.

“(He) loved information and tracking down information,” Taylor said. “He worked a lot of different sources, he worked the phones. It amazes me how much information he could find.”

Elliott Potter, the executive editor and publisher of The Daily News, remembered Caram as a “news junkie” who spent more than a year gathering information from the USO’s Stateside Books, which service members signed or drew in while at the USO. Potter said that Caram took several Vietnam-era names from the books, which were divided by state, and began cross referencing them. Once he gathered related documents and spoke to people who were either with the deceased service member at the time of death or nearby, he worked with Potter to write the story.

The end result was a series of articles which ran in The Daily News about service members who traveled through the Jacksonville USO and later died in Vietnam.

“Ed was a photographer, reporter and storyteller,” Potter said.

Brown said he knew his friend’s final days were coming because he saw his health deteriorating.

Caram fought the disease valiantly, Brown said, but the cancer had immobilized him.

“It never reached the place where he didn’t have hope (or) didn’t think he’d beat it,” Brown said.

Amanda Hickey is the government reporter at The Daily News. She can be reached at amanda.hickey@jdnews.com.